School Kits

My church has an amazing humanitarian aid program that is involved in many efforts to help those in need around the world.  There are lots of kids in the world who don't have the supplies they need for school.  One of the humanitarian projects is to make school kits.  Here's a brief article about some excited kids receiving school supplies in Guatemala.

Over the last ten years, I've enjoyed making a few dozen school kits.  Here's how you do it.  First you need some school supplies.

Then you make some school bags.  Here is a written description of how to make the school bags or go here to find a pattern in pdf format.  Here are some of the bags I made this time.

I made six flowery 'girl' bags.  It was fun and liberating to free-motion the petals and flower center onto the denim background.  I sewed the big petals on first, then the smaller ones over the bigger ones, then sewed the round center over all the the messy edges.  Here's a close up of one of my favorite flowers.

It was more challenging to come up with six 'boy' bags.  I love the lizard but it was too labor intensive.  The soccer ball was fun but I didn't want to mass produce that one either.

I enlisted the help of some superheroes to finish up the rest of the 'boy' bags.

Oh, and if you think I just whipped these up, think again.  In true 'Kathy fashion' the cut (but not sewn) denim bags and school supplies (including 72 spiral bound notebooks) moved with us from California to Tennessee a year ago.  This is the year to finish unfinished business!